


wolves will take me home

by fuckingspacequeen



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, Scott has a daughter named Emily, also mentions of Scott McCall, erica and boyd also have children, mentions of sheriff stilinski aww yeah, semi detailed description of an injury, technically
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 09:29:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1221217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckingspacequeen/pseuds/fuckingspacequeen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The attacks on the settlement have been getting progressively worse. Over the last three months, the raiders have hit harder and faster than anything Stiles has seen in his lifetime. They’ve decimated what was once a budding township, and those left behind are terrified, increasingly looking to the Sheriff for answers he just doesn’t have.</p><p>*</p><p>OR that one where Stiles is kidnapped by werewolves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. run the night

**Author's Note:**

> Kso this is actually based on a dream I had last night, but just as a disclaimer: 
> 
> I have realised how similar it sounds in parts to something Saucery has already written. So, uh. Sorry about that.

The attacks on the settlement have been getting progressively worse. Over the last three months, the raiders have hit harder and faster than anything Stiles has seen in his lifetime. They’ve decimated what was once a budding township, and those left behind are terrified, increasingly looking to the Sheriff for answers he just doesn’t have.

Stiles can see it in his dad’s tired face, the lines etched permanently around his mouth, the dark hollows underneath red rimmed eyes. They’re running out of options, out of food, out of shelter, out of a will to live. Plenty have tried leaving, many never to be heard from again.

When it happens, Stiles is caught out in the broad open, alone and weapon-less.

Which, figures. Their warning system is obviously inherently defective, since the warning bells don’t go off until it’s too late, and by then Stiles can see that the raiders have already infiltrated the settlement, moving quickly on silent feet.

He sets off toward his home at a run, carefully skirting around behind the little cover he can find, wary of being caught out by the raiders when he’s so vulnerable. It doesn’t make any difference. When Stiles catches sight of one of them, he ducks down behind a small hill, heart in his throat and pulse thundering in his ears.

He knows the raider didn’t see him, but he’s stuck, now, nowhere to run. The worst part is that there’s no one but the raider to hear his strangled yelp as he’s grabbed by the back of the shirt and hauled unceremoniously up, feet barely touching the floor.

The guy is six foot plus of solid muscle and a half-snarl that should terrify Stiles, but instead makes him angry. It’s what spurs him into twisting around violently, hands clasping around the dagger at the raider’s hip and yanking it free.

Surprised, the man lets him go, and Stiles stumbles gracelessly onto his feet, holding the knife out in front of him.

“What’re you plannin’ to do now, kid?” the man sneers, and Stiles is pretty certain he looks _amused_ , which, okay, maybe if their positions were reversed he’d feel the same way.

But he’s still the Sheriff’s kid, and despite appearances to the contrary, Stiles isn’t totally helpless. Lunging forward, he catches the raider enough by surprise to bury the knife in his thigh up to the hilt, twisting viciously and then tearing through skin and muscle.

He doesn’t get the knife far as the raider lets out a pained roar, and Stiles’ hands are so slippery with blood that he loses his grip almost as soon as the man starts to pull away. It doesn’t matter, because it’s enough, and Stiles doesn’t hesitate to start running.

The last thing he expects is to get maybe five feet before he’s hauled off the ground a second time around. The raider is panting, but as he spins Stiles around, it’s not his expression that makes Stiles’ blood run cold, but rather his… face.

Where once there was a man, there’s now hair and fangs and, Stiles realises belatedly at the pressure in his arm, claws. He finds himself pushing against the—the beast in an attempt to get away. The raider lets him go, and Stiles stumbles back a few steps, glancing down to find no sight of the wound he’d inflicted. Blood soaked and torn pants, yes, but no visible injury.

Stiles balks, blurts, “What the hell _are_ you?!” and the raider only draws his lips back from his sharpened teeth in a snarl.

It’s a testament, really, to Stiles’ dad, that he manages to keep his head on his shoulders. Making himself look as small and terrified as possible, he definitely doesn’t have to affect the slight waver in his voice as he mutters, “Jesus Christ.”

The raider looks pleased with himself, amused again, and Stiles waits until the exact moment when he inevitably relaxes his guard. When it happens, and it doesn’t take long, because Stiles knows how puny and human he looks next to this guy, he spins around and takes off again.

He doesn’t get much further this time around, but the raider obviously isn’t taking chances anymore, uses his entire body to send Stiles face first into the dirt, a hand wrapping around his mouth. Stiles doesn’t bother to struggle, winded as he is, and instead cranes his head as far back as it’ll go in order to see what the raider sees.

A surge of hope wells up in him as he catches sight of his dad and two of his deputies, not too far away. From this distance, all Stiles would need to do is yell and—no no _no_! They’re already moving away, and he has to act quickly if he wants help.

When he bites down, it’s with every ounce of strength and anger and fear he has in his body, blunt teeth slicing through skin and down down down into muscle. Stiles’ mouth fills quickly with blood, but he doesn’t stop biting until the raider rears back, punching Stiles in the side of the head with his free hand.

Stiles reels from it, but he’s not stupid, adrenaline fuelled, and it only takes him a few seconds to wriggle out from underneath the guy, half crawling and then climbing to his feet. Instead of trying to run immediately, he throws back his head and hollers, as loud as he can make his voice, “DAD! OVER HERE!”

He hears cursing behind him, but instead of turning to look, takes his chances with running again. This time he has a destination, and a plan, and he’s so close, so close—

It almost seems inevitable, when he more or less careens into the brick wall body of another raider. Stiles bounces back, glaring at them as he spits out blood. There are three of them, four if he counts the raider behind him, and his dad isn’t going to stand a chance against them if they’re all… animals.

The tallest raider smirks, looking at a point above Stiles’ head as he says, “Couldn’t even catch one little kid?”

The raider Stiles had bitten comes up behind him, clawed hand clamping around his arm, and says succinctly, “Shut up.”

The tall raider does, but only because he’s distracted by something. Stiles watches him tilt his head to the side as if he’s listening, and Stiles wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that he has supernatural hearing. He’s already catalogued: speed, strength, ability to heal. Why not hearing, too?

“They’re looking for the boy,” one of the other raiders says, and Stiles feels like he’s going to have a heart attack, because he’s led his dad and the deputies into a goddamn trap, and none of them are going to make it out of this alive.

“If I go with you willingly, can we leave now?” he blurts, a little desperately, trying not to flinch under the hard, calculating stare of the tallest raider as it lands on him. Stiles presses, “You don’t have to hurt them. I’ll come with you. We can leave.”

Some kind of silent conversation is carried out over his head, and Stiles thinks he probably wouldn’t be able to hear anything other than his pulse thundering in his ears, anyway.

When the tallest raider nods, and says, “Let’s move,” his legs very nearly buckle underneath him, and the only thing that keeps him upright is the raider still clamped to his arm.

They jostle him into the forest at a punishing pace, and it takes less than ten minutes for it to become evident that Stiles isn’t going to be able to keep up. When he trips for the third or fourth time in under a minute, one of them growls, angrily, “Just fucking carry him.”

Stiles thinks to protest, starts trying to worm away, and then suddenly something sharp hits the side of his head, flooding his brain with pain, before the world goes dark.

*

When he wakes, he’s slung over someone’s shoulder.

He just about manages to get out, “I’m gonna puke,” before he’s thrown to the floor and left to scramble to his knees before engaging in actually vomiting. There’s a lot of blood in there, which, gross. Stiles totally doesn’t want to think about the fact that he apparently drank some beast guy’s blood.

It takes him a moment to realise that only two of the raiders are standing there looking down at him, and when Stiles climbs shakily to his feet, he’s silently pushed onward. It takes him a while to stop stumbling, legs numb and head foggy, but when he does, they only pick up the pace.

He doesn’t even get a chance to ask where the others have gone before he’s being pushed out of the edge of the forest and into a huge clearing filled with tents. Stiles is guessing this is where the raiders live, and it figures that they’d choose this over having an actual roof over their heads.

In the middle of the circularly set out tents is another wide space, where Stiles finds a small group of his people huddled together and looking miserable. When he catches sight of Scott’s daughter at the edge of the group, he doesn’t even bother to glance at the raiders before propelling himself over to her.

She’s dirty, but not bloody, face blotchy and tear stained. Stiles catches her up in his arms immediately, lets her bury her face in his shoulder as he cradles the back of her head, murmuring that she’s fine, she’s going to be okay, he’s going to look after her. They’re promises he can’t really afford to make, but right at that moment in time he’s too angry to really care.

It’s not long before the raiders have crowded around them. While many of them have human faces, more still have—well, wolf faces. Stiles almost snorts when he makes the connection, realises that that’s the very reason so many of them have huge wolf skins thrown over their shoulders, often with the wolf heads still attached.

His amusement quickly fades as they’re sorted into groups by age, however, and one of the raiders tries to make him put Scott’s daughter down. He thinks to protest, but there’s no point in making this any worse than it has to be, not until he knows what the point of this all is, anyway.

“Hey Emily,” Stiles says to her softly, setting her down on her feet. “You need to go stand over there for a little bit, okay? I’ll be right here. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

She seems unsure, but it makes Stiles’ heart clench to know that she trusts him enough to go and stand with the small group of kids, alone, tears starting up at the corners of her eyes all over again.

When Stiles is almost immediately jostled into place with a different group, he bares his teeth at one of the raiders, shoving past him to go and stand at the edge so he can keep an eye on Emily.

There’s a brief lull once they’re all sorted, and Stiles almost gets his hopes up that this isn’t going to be what he thinks it is, but of course, it is. One of the raiders steps forward and lays claim to one of the women in the group beside Stiles’, clawed hand wrapping around her arm and tugging her away from the cluster of people.

Stiles doesn’t know her, but he thinks he recognises her, feels sick to his stomach at her deathly silent acceptance, face pale and drawn, as she’s dragged away.

Two more are taken in much the same way, and Stiles is proud of his people for the way they handle it; there’s no crying, no sobbing or begging or pleading. All of them seem resigned, but still proud enough to hold their heads high and act as though they’ve had some choice in this.

That changes when one of the largest men Stiles has ever seen steps forward. He’s got to be going on for seven foot tall, with biceps bigger than Stiles’ head. His bare chest is criss-crossed with scars, his face grizzled and equally pock marked. He’s wearing nothing more than a loin cloth and Stiles immediately balks at the way his face scans across the younger children, landing on Emily.

The man is halfway to leering forward when Stiles flails in front of him, feet propelling him across the dirt of their own accord.

“Whoa, hey, no, buddy—“ Stiles finds himself saying, hands held out in front of him to keep the man back. When he does step back, surprised, Stiles spreads his arms out to the sides, as though creating a barrier between the man and Emily.

“Sorry, big guy, you can’t have her,” he adds, acutely aware of the fact that this guy could probably eat his face off.

There’s no way in hell he’s letting him get his hands on Scott’s daughter, though; especially not with that leery expression on his face. Stiles knows there’s only one reason he’d want her, and he’d go to the grave before letting it happen.

The last thing he expects in response is for the giant of a man to seize him, stopping short at the sound of a low growl. Stiles’ throat hurts a little from the hand that had briefly wrapped around it, but he’s more interested in finding out what the hell is going on.

He follows the gaze of the rest of the crowd as it parts like the sea for fucking Moses, revealing… well, Stiles isn’t actually sure what the hell he’s looking at. Objectively, this guy is gorgeous; he’s all chiselled stubble-covered jaw and high cheekbones and about seventy different shades of green in his eyes. That’s not to mention the bare torso, the muscles rippling underneath golden skin.

And, okay, Stiles might have a sort of almost fear boner thing going on right now, but whatever, he’s not under any obligation to react well under pressure.

Two men move simultaneously behind the leader, both taller than him, one darker and more muscled, the other slender with light curly hair. Stiles barely spares them a glance before his gaze ends up back on the most attractive face he’s ever seen in his life. And, really, that’s huge coming from Stiles. He’s friends with _Lydia._

Instead of saying anything, the raider simply gestures towards Stiles with a tilt of his head. Emily’s potential assailant looks like he’s about to open his mouth to protest, which is when the other guy’s fangs come down, eyes glowing blue. Stiles almost doesn’t hear the low rumble of a growl he lets out.

He’s pretty sure he gets what’s going on here, and Stiles doesn’t know whether to be pleased or not when the grizzled guy backs the fuck off with his head bowed low. Gorgeous or not, the space around the raider is indicative enough that he’s wielding some serious power, and Stiles doubts that’s going to work in his favour at all.

“This one is mine,” he says, and Stiles is startled by the honeyed voice, the lack of growl or gravel or grit. Nobody says anything, which Stiles guesses means he’s been, you know, claimed. Great.

He doesn’t expect the darker of the two companions to step forward and say, “I’ll take the girl.” His face is kind, and Stiles almost wants to trust him, but he can’t quite bring himself to do so. Not with Scott’s daughter. Never with her.

Opening his mouth to protest, Stiles finds himself shutting it again as the leader gives him a hard look. “It’s settled,” he says, and Stiles feels like it’s meant to be meaningful, like he’s supposed to understand the bone this guy is throwing him. He doesn’t.

When he turns and walks away, Stiles is pretty certain he’s meant to follow, looks at the raider’s two companions in confusion. The one with the curly hair nods, and Stiles reaches down to lift Emily up, feeling defiant.

It seems to be what they expect, however, and when Stiles starts walking, the pair simply fall in line behind him as he follows their leader, Emily’s face buried in his neck.

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a lot of Derek in this one, sorry!

The two lackeys turn out to be called Boyd and Isaac. Stiles only finds this out because they introduce themselves to Emily that way. She lifts her head to stare at them suspiciously, but otherwise doesn’t respond, tiny hands fisting the back of Stiles’ shirt.

Over Emily’s head, Boyd says to Stiles, “My mate will take care of her,” which Stiles takes as his cue to put Emily down and go away. Which, yeah, no. Not gonna happen.

He says as much.

“You have my word she won’t be harmed,” Boyd says, which elicits an eye roll from Stiles.

“Your word doesn’t mean much to me under the circumstances,” he points out unapologetically.

“Our word is our bond, which is more than I can say for your kind,” is venomously interjected by the raider whose name Stiles still hasn’t caught, eyebrows drawn down in an angry scowl.

Stiles doesn’t know what that’s actually supposed to mean, or where the anger is coming from, but the guy has to be a freaking fruitloop if he really thinks Stiles is going to willingly let Emily out of his sight.

“I don’t know who you think kidnapped who—“ he begins heatedly, only to cut himself off as a small, skinny boy comes running up out of nowhere.

He pauses beside Boyd, and Stiles catches the resemblance as they share a heavy look. Then, the boy runs up to Stiles, head tilted back so he can squint up at him. “Erica ses we should be frens,” he says earnestly.

While the kid is potentially also a fang-sprouting monster, it’s a ploy that almost instantly puts Stiles at ease. They wouldn’t actually hurt Emily in front of one of their own children, would they?

As though sensing Stiles’ resolve weakening, Boyd says, “We’ll only be next door.”

That doesn’t comfort Stiles in the least, in terms of why he’s being left alone with any of them, but he figures it’s probably better that Emily doesn’t see whatever it is that might be about to happen to him.

He even starts to think that might be their reason for separating them in the first place.

“What do you think, Emmy?” he asks, voice soft. “D’you wanna go play for a little while?”

For the first time since they got there, she looks a little less scared, and after a moment of consideration says, “Alright Stiles.”

Stiles knows that tone of voice from Allison all too well, good naturedly long-suffering, and it startles him into grinning. “Thanks kiddo,” he says, putting her down on the ground finally and smoothing out her hair.

Emily actually grins back, which he why adds, “Be good, okay? And if you need anything, I’m like, two feet away. Just holler.”

She might not get the implication of his words, but the raiders around him do. Stiles is anything but stupid, after all, and there’s no way in hell that he trusts them. It’s just that they’re making it look like he has a choice right now, when he really doesn’t, and he figures he’s got to take what he can get.

It still kind of hurts to watch Emily leave with the kid and Boyd, though, especially when she looks back at him and gives a small, shy wave before ducking inside the tent.

When he next looks up, Stiles finds he’s alone but for Isaac, who gestures to the larger of the two tents and says, “He’s waiting for you.”

Stiles raises his eyebrows and shoots back, “Because that’s comforting,” which earns him a shit eating grin.

“Wasn’t meant to be,” Isaac says as Stiles makes his way inside.

*

Part of Stiles is expecting to be immediately grabbed and… savaged? Ravaged? If this raider had been Grizzly, he thinks that would actually be a distinct possibility. He’s not a young girl, but he’s still young and slender, and he knows that would probably be enough.

The last thing he expects is a large tub filled with apparently warm water, if the steam rising into the air is anything to go by.

When the raider inevitably looks up at him, Stiles can’t help but blurt, “Is that a bath or a cooking pot?”

He’s not certain, but he’s pretty sure he catches the vague hint of a smile.

“You’re covered in blood,” the raider answers, and Stiles is struck once again by the lack of gravel in his voice.

He looks down at himself as the raider gestures at him, realises that his hands and arms up to his elbows are still coated in a mixture of blood and mud; his chest is coated too, he realises, with blood and something that might be his own vomit, and when he rubs his fingers against his chin experimentally, bits of red flake off onto the floor.

Stiles is almost surprised Emily didn’t run away screaming.

“Huh,” he says, in lieu of anything intelligent, and then looks up to find the raider staring at him expectantly.

“So… what? Are you going to bathe me? Then what?” Stiles asks.

The raider snorts derisively. “You’re old enough to bathe yourself,” he answers, as though Stiles had just insinuated that he _wanted_ to be bathed.

Which, under other circumstances maybe—yeah, no.

“Fuck you,” he spits out instead, probably a little more venomously than he’d intended.

The raider just raises his eyebrows.

“You don’t get to just—you _kidnapped_ us, you’ve hurt my people and taken away my niece, and now you want—what? Cleanliness?” He folds his arms across his chest defiantly. “Fuck you and your bath.”

Stiles doesn’t know what the myriad expressions that flit across the raider’s face are, but he does know that for a split second, he almost regrets his tirade.

He doesn’t get more of a chance than that for regret because the raider is suddenly standing right in front of Stiles, hauling him up by the front of his shirt and then lifting, like he weighs almost nothing.

The descent into the tub full of water is such a surprise that Stiles almost drowns in it for a moment, only managing to come up for air by sheer luck. When he does, he’s angry and unable to breathe and when he stops choking long enough to look, the raider has a smug expression on his face.

Stiles, because he’s always been lacking in certain elements of self-preservation, sluices a huge wave of water over the side of the tub. It goes crashing over the edge and hits the raider square in the middle, soaking his stomach and pants, pooling on the floor around his feet.

The look of shock on the raider’s face makes it worth it, even if Stiles gets his arms ripped off. He looks so utterly scandalised, in fact, that Stiles can’t stop the hysterical laughter as it bubbles over.

He’s expecting violence in retaliation, but instead, the raider simply turns around and leaves the tent. Stiles is so surprised that for a moment he just stands in the warm water, shivering slightly as the cool air prickles over his damp skin.

“As the Sheriff’s kid,” a voice says from behind him, making Stiles jump and crane around to look at the person speaking, “I’m pretty certain you’re smart enough to know better.”

The owner of the voice is a blonde with a bright red mouth and a kid resting on her left hip. In her right hand is a huge jug, steam billowing up into the air. Her gaze is fixed on Stiles in amused disappointment.

“How  d’you know I’m the Sheriff’s kid?” he asks, instead of bothering with who she is.

The blonde tosses her head in what Stiles interprets as a shrug, sending her hair cascading back over her shoulder.

“Clothes off, take your damn bath, and then maybe someone will answer your questions,” she says, and she sounds so much like Lydia that for a second Stiles is stunned into complying.

He’s halfway to pulling his shirt off, her cool gaze still on his form, when he pauses. “D’you have to watch?” he demands, apparently resigning himself to the fact that a bath is on the cards.

“Nope,” she says, and her grin is practically feral, gaze turning expectant.

Stiles hesitates for a moment longer, and then thinks: fuck it, before struggling out of the wet fabric clinging stubbornly to his skin. He almost manages to get his pants off without incident, but he congratulates himself for the victory too early, and ends up sliding down onto his back, which hits the side of the tub painfully as water sloshes over onto the floor.

The kid giggles even as the blonde huffs an irritated sigh. Stiles ignores them both in favour of throwing his pants on the floor beside his shirt.

He’s shivering from the cold by the time the blonde approaches the tub and tips the hot water into it.

“Waahhh—oohhh, okay, that’s goooood,” Stiles finds himself admitting, initially flinching away and then sinking down to cover his shoulders in the water too. It’s just a little too warm for comfort with the added heat, and the blood and mud still clinging to his skin turn the water a murky red-brown colour.

“Here,” the blonde says, throwing a bar of soap at him, which Stiles fails entirely to catch as it plops into the water beside him. He picks it up and studies it for a moment, surprised by the lack of fragrance and the soft, easy way it lathers up into suds.

The blonde leaves the tent without so much as a warning or a backwards glance, and Stiles takes that as his cue to clean himself up.

*

The shirt Stiles pulls on is surprisingly soft, but too large over the bulk of his slender frame, and he’s fiddling with the draw strings around his neck when the blonde comes back in again. When he looks up at her, she raises her eyebrows disapprovingly, and then crosses over to him.

“I’d like your permission to bathe your niece,” she says, which comes as such a surprise that Stiles can’t even manage to be suitably indignant as she manhandles him, tucking the shirt into his pants and straightening him up.

“What?” he asks eloquently, the metaphorical wheel of his brain coming to a shuddering halt.

So far, he’s been given no options and no answers. To Stiles’ knowledge, he and Emily are being held captive after being forcibly kidnapped from their home. This is pretty far removed from that.

The blonde rolls her eyes. “She’s too young to bathe herself,” she says, as though Stiles had even questioned that fact. “You could bathe her, if you want, but I somehow doubt that’s your area of expertise.”

She finishes on a smug smirk that makes Stiles scowl a little, mostly because she’s right. Uncle duties haven’t included bathing Emily since she was still a bundle of blankets. Even then, he’s pretty certain he only ever helped out a handful of times.

“But why?” he asks, then amends, “Why are you asking my permission?”

“She’s a child,” the blonde says, like that’s all the answer needs. When he raises her eyebrows at her, she adds, “She deserves kindness.”

Stiles is loathe to trust that this is the truth; that this blonde doesn’t have some nefarious scheme up her sleeve. But at the same time, he doesn’t have a lot of options in the matter, and the fact that she _asked_? It puts him a little more at ease.

He realises that could be the entire point, but…

“If she agrees,” he says, at length. “If she doesn’t, I’m sure I can handle it.”

The blonde nods and turns to leave the tent, pausing at the entryway. “By the way, I’m Erica,” she adds, ducking outside.

Stiles isn’t left to stand uselessly on the spot for more than a few moments before the blonde—Erica returns with Emily. At the sight of Stiles, she breaks out into a wide smile and lets go of Erica’s hand to run over to him.

He can feel the worry in his stomach unknotting itself as he crouches down in front of her, finding her not only outwardly unscathed, but also _smiling_.

“Unca!” she greets. “I made a friend an’ we played hopscotch!”

Stiles smiles despite the fact that he’s almost taken aback. He hadn’t wanted to expect the worst, but at the same time, he just hadn’t known for sure that she’d be safe. The fact that she seems proud of the fact that she’s made a friend, that she seems to have forgotten the kidnapping altogether, makes Stiles’ heart swell with affection.

“That’s awesome,” he tells her. “Is Erica your new friend?”

Emily’s young face crinkles up in thought as she looks up at Erica, and Stiles is surprised by the soft, warm smile that Erica sends her way. It’s far removed from the predatory smirk he’d been privy to previously. Not that he minds.

“D’you wanna be my friend, Er’ca?” she asks finally.

Erica’s smile widens, getting warmer if that’s even physically possible, and Stiles himself feels warmed to watch the way that it makes Emily light up.

“I’d love to be your friend,” Erica answers solemnly.

“I made TWO friends, Stiles!” Emily announces, turning to look at Stiles and puffing out her chest in pride. It’s an action that reminds Stiles all too much of Scott, and he chuckles.

“As long as I’m still your best friend,” Stiles says.

Emily plants her hands on her hips and huffs out, “Duh!”

Stiles' heart swells all over again, relief finally washing over him at the fact that his niece is clearly alive and well and happy and _safe._ He couldn’t really ask for anything more under the circumstances.

“So, hey,” he finds himself saying. “Erica was thinking you might like a bath. What d’you say?”

He already knows the answer is going to be yes, because while Emily will always be Scott and Allison’s child, while she’ll always come home dirty and with scraped palms and bloody knees, she’s also a big fan of getting to splash around in water. Particularly when it’s warm.

“I saaayy… YES!” she answers, jigging around excitedly and making Stiles grin fondly.

Straightening up, he ruffles a hand in her dirty hair, surprised to find a completely different softness in Erica’s expression as she meets his gaze.

“Well, that settles it,” he says, dropping his eyes back down to Emily’s small form. “Baths all around!”

Emily giggles as Erica silently offers her a hand, looking to Stiles for permission, briefly, before taking it.

“We’ll just be next door if you need us,” Erica says, leading Emily out of the tent.

Before they get to the doorway, Emily pauses and cranes around to wave at Stiles, saying, “Bye unca!”

Stiles can’t help the way his voice cracks slightly as he says, “See you later, kid.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants to come hang out with me, I'm on tumblr as mickeygallovich. xoxo


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